“A collective defense model is what we’re talking about when addressing cyber.“
Kirstjen Nielsen is an internationally recognized expert and proven leader on critical security issues facing governments and institutions. She served as the sixth Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2017-2019, directing widespread actions to increase the security and resilience of the nation against evolving threats across land, air, sea and cyber domains.
There has been significant progress in cyber security over the last 4-6 years, and the discussions are the same around the world: how to better share information, make our responses more automatic and what the government should do regarding the private sector. The difficulty with cyber is that it is at rue weak-link problem. Ultimately, it will only be as secure as the systems that touch your systems.
“It’s past time to give the DACA population a permanent status. Congress needs to act and give them status.” What went wrong with child separation at the border? The three departments in charge (Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Homeland Security) didn’t have the resources to process the influx of migrants. Child separation was an “indirect result” of an inefficient system, not “policy.”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Kirstjen Nielsen
Secretary of Homeland Security
(2017-2019)
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone, welcome back to SALT Talks, my name is John Darsie, I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology, and geopolitics. The SALT Talks are a series of digital interviews we've been doing during this work from home period in lieu of our global conference series, the SALT Conference. And, really, our goal is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts that are leading investors, creators, and thinkers. And also, to provide a platform for big, important ideas that we think are changing and shaping the world.
John Darsie: (00:39)
We're very pleased today to welcome Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen to SALT Talks. Secretary Nielsen is an internationally recognized expert and proven leader on critical security issues facing governments and institutions. Her breadth of experience stands at a crossroads of policy, strategy, and operations, so it's a very apt guest for our SALT Talks series. And, she provides a unique perspective across complex enterprise environments and influencing her position on the importance of stakeholder engagement, the role of technology as a force multiplier, and the need to address today's threats, while still assessing and preparing for those of tomorrow.
John Darsie: (01:17)
Secretary Nielsen was sworn in as the 6th Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security in December of 2017, I believe we were talking to Secretary Nielsen before we went live and we asked, "Did you overlap at all with Anthony?" And she remarked that she actually did overlap with Anthony for about half of a day. She walked in with secretary, excuse me, General Kelly the day that he was sworn in, and the next thing he did after being sworn in, was he walked downstairs and fired Anthony. So, hopefully we can get a little bit of a conversation about that during today's talk. Anyways, during her tenure-
Anthony Scaramucci: (01:50)
That's fake news. He didn't walk downstairs. He went from the Oval Office to his office, he called me in, and then he fired me. Don't give out fake news on SALT Talks.
John Darsie: (01:58)
There were no stairs.
Anthony Scaramucci: (01:59)
Okay. There were no stairs. Are you enjoying yourself while you're telling that story?
John Darsie: (02:06)
I figured I had to bring it up.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:08)
All right. Go ahead go, enjoy yourself, Darsie.
John Darsie: (02:11)
During her tenure... This is about Secretary Nielsen, Anthony.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:13)
Let me just get SkyBridge payroll on the phone here. Yeah, that cut for John Darsie, yeah, let's talk about that after this is over. Yeah, keep going, Darsie. Go ahead.
John Darsie: (02:25)
She directed during her tenure wide spread actions to increase the security and resilience of the nation against evolving threats across land, air, sea, and the cyber domain, which is something we'll get into in depth today. She was previously commissioned to serve as the White House Principal Deputy Chief of Staff and the DHS Chief of Staff. Secretary Nielsen has also advised government agencies, private sector companies, international organizations, and NGOs on assessing their risk posture, and increasing their resiliency, developing crisis communication plans, and understanding various policy environments, and identifying and mitigating hazards.
John Darsie: (03:02)
She's the former president and founder of Sunesis, which is a security management firm. And, she currently serves as the president of Lighthouse Strategies. A reminder, if you have any questions for Secretary Nielsen during today's talk, you can enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen. And now, I will turn it over to the aforementioned Anthony Scaramucci, the one-time White House Communications Director. He's also the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm, and the chairman of Salt. And with that, I'll kick it to Anthony.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:33)
Thanks, John. But, the one thing that you forgot to mention, which is also important to all of us is that Secretary Nielsen joined us in Abu Dhabi last December, where you gave a masterful performance on so many different things, masterful dissertation on cyber security, et cetera. So, I want to get into a little bit of that with you this afternoon. But, before we go there, Madam Secretary, take us back into your background, your college years, and the odyssey that you took prior to becoming the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (04:10)
First of all, what a pleasure to see you all. It's both exciting when video works, and with the added opportunity to see other humans. So, thanks for pulling this together. Homeland Security at a high level, at least the way I think of it, it's a team sport. I mean, there's just way too many threats that we face today. They're constantly emerging for any one entity to be able to address them. No one entity has all of the capabilities as of these authorities' resources. When I look back, what I did rather unintentionally, because at first, we didn't necessarily have a discipline called Homeland Security until after 9/11.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (04:47)
But looking back, I tried to play every role, every position, if you will, in the team that is Homeland Security. So, I worked on the Hill. I'm a lawyer by training. I helped private sector companies that provide technologies and services to the federal government. I helped private sector companies protect themselves, and understand how to do that, and protect their customers, clients and functions. I've played different roles in the government, the executive branch, worked with international organizations, allies, really trying to pull together that whole concept of public private partnership. And then, of course, after 9/11 I helped start up TSA, which was then in the Department of Transportation, and then went to the White House. And so, between the multiple of roles, much of the early Homeland Security doctrine I either led the development of, or was very intimately involved in directly. So, very familiar, it's a very broad mission space as you know.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:46)
But it's by in large, Madam Secretary, it's been very successful because the precursor of it was 9/11. It's been 19 years since that tragedy, and I would say that we've done a reasonably good job of containing terrorism, reasonably good job of eliminating internal threats in the United States. What were some of the main threats and issues that you were focusing on when you were the secretary?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (06:14)
Yeah. So, it's always a great question, and you know me, I love to talk, but this is a particular one where it's hard to be brief. DHS is the third largest department in our government 240000 law enforcement, civilian, and military employees. It spans everything from counter terrorism, as you mentioned, to a branch of the US military. The Coast Guard probably is in the Department of Homeland Security. We respond to natural disasters, we prevent activist terrorists from different kinds of soft target attacks. So, it's very broad.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (06:53)
And then, there's all sorts of parts that we don't talk about as much, election security, we might talk about that today, but that's certainly an expansion of the mission space. And so, under my watch we really focused on what are the emerging threats? We need to double down on today's threats, but how can we look at the horizon and what should be anticipating. So, I spent a lot of time on new explosive devices that had been developed by those who seek to do us harm in the aviation sector, obviously spent a lot on cyber, worked with Congress to get some authority to counter drones, which are ubiquitous now unfortunately, and we really need to all come together and figure out how to address that. WMD, unfortunately there are still new and developing weapons of mass destruction. We got to make sure we stay on top of that.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (07:41)
We also did quite a bit to change the authorities. A focus of mine was to make sure with this expanding mission space that the employees and great men and women of DHS really had the tools, and resources, and authorities they needed. So, we worked with Congress to create the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which I'm very proud of. We actually did create a WMD entity, we strengthened other entities that existed, and then we did a lot of policy changes to make sure that all across the homeland, and with our international partners, we raised the bar of security in every realm that we touch. So, quite a few things, but I would just say at a high level, it's so important in this day and age to really keep your eye on that horizon, and be very aware of the emerging threats. Because once they're here, it's too late. Bureaucracy does not move quickly enough, so you have to be able to anticipate.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:34)
So, let's go right into the cybersecurity space then, how do you feel we are in terms of cybersecurity, private, public, governmental cybersecurity? And then, secondary to that, what are your thoughts on addressing the risk of things like TikTok, or Zoom, facial recognition, Huawei, in the umbrella of cybersecurity?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (08:58)
Yeah. At a high level, I would say that we have made tremendous progress over the last, four, five, six years with respect to cyber security. We really needed to take the time to set the roles and responsibilities within the US context of who was going to do what, who is best positioned to do what, and strengthen that public-private partnership. It's interesting, I just was part of a group that was advising Australia as they worked to put out their new cybersecurity strategy, and the debates are the same everywhere in the world, how do we better share information? How do we make our response more automatic? What should the government be doing vis-à-vis the private sector, and vice versa? What do citizens need to do?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (09:46)
I think the difficulty with cyber is that it's a true weak link problem. I mean, you can do everything that an expert would tell you to do to protect your own system, but ultimately, it's only going to be as secure as the systems that touch yours. So, a collective defense model is really what we're talking about, when we talk about cyber. Your risk is mine, and my risk is now your risk. And, that's very different than in the traditional physical world. So, we have to continue to expand. There's a lot more that we need to do. I really personally welcome the work that the Cyber Solarium did. I'm anxious to see many of their recommendations adopted in the NDAA, I hope that they are. We really did need to pause and assess where we are, and I think they did a tremendous job.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (10:37)
With respect to the tech that you brought up. It's so interesting, because it's a great list in that they're all so different. I mean, my short answer would be, we have to look at all of these from a risk management perspective. So, if you look at something like Zoom, that's a perfect example, among other things of a risk around concentrated dependency. When we all are depending on Zoom for our daily lives, for conferences, for the work that we do, for education, it puts tremendous, not only strain on the infrastructure bandwidth, if you will, but it also opens up a new vulnerability. Because if Zoom should go down, or something like that, then we have tremendous ripple effects in terms of everyone's ability to function.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (11:22)
If you look at something like facial rec, that's very interesting because as a disruptive and still in some minds, cutting edge technology throughout the world, we don't yet have the legal and regulatory frameworks in place for customers and the public to feel comfortable that facial rec is doing what it should, and not doing what it shouldn't do. That it's protecting our privacy, and that it is being used in appropriate manner. So, it puts stress on the system and the companies to say, "Okay. How can we demonstrate we're being good citizens?" And so, you're seeing an example of this, you've seen all of the big companies that use facial rec actually go to governments and say, "Please regulate us. Please pass a law. We want something to be able to measured it against to show..."
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (12:07)
Trying to go, perhaps it's on your list, Huawei and TikTok, I read somewhere the other day, somebody was asking, "Well, is this really about China, or is it really about the technologies?" I think the answer is yes and yes. They're very different technologies, one is more of a supply chain risk, and perhaps the ability and control that gives to the China's government by virtue of the infrastructure. And, the other is a similar problem, but a very different risk. It's more about data, geotargeting keystrokes, and who then would have access to that data. But, I think as citizens and particularly as a government, we have to look at each one of these technologies within some sort of a risk framework, and then figure out the best way to mitigate and manage it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:57)
You mentioned in Abu Dhabi, something that stuck with me. I want to see if I get it right. But, you basically said that data and identity are the two currencies of the future. And, I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit, and how are they in danger, effectively?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (13:19)
And, to be even more specific on the data front, I really think it's, if you will, it's data quantity, and data speed, perhaps in particular, that will actually be traded as new currencies. Companies will rise and fall based on those concepts. And of course, the related concept that data without insight is noise. There's so much data out there that if whatever it is that you're doing, providing, integrating doesn't have that analytical piece, it doesn't mean anything. But, back to data. I think I said it runs everything we do. It runs the SCADA systems that run all of our critical functions. It enables us to relate to one another. It manages the way that we see the world. It really is the lifeblood of how our society functions digitally these days.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (14:09)
The reason it's at risk is because of the exact same reason. We spent years talking about data confidentiality, and rightly so, and we still should. I mean, protecting our data and ensuring that we understand who has access to it for what purpose. But, the concepts of integrity and availability we have seen come to the fore over the last three to four years in a way that many did not expect between ransomware attacks, wiper attacks, and just anything that questions the integrity of information. I often feel that reality itself these days, is up for debate. Between geo-spoofing, between deep fakes, between... And, that's even before we get to issues with point interference.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (14:55)
So, if what you see is not necessarily true, if what you read is not necessarily true, then what does that mean? And of course, to take it another level, if we have false data fed into, through an injection or a supervisory and control system, the function would perform as it should, but not the way we want it to perform. That's of course what we worry about when we talk about electricity and water, et cetera. Identity is interesting, because we have a real question about identity these days. Do you own your identity? I don't know. And, I think we're seeing them in COVID. It's a strong argument from a public health perspective that at some point here, if this virus continues on the propagation path it is, that governments around the world will want to understand who has it, who has been tested, who has recovered for purposes of protecting others. But, if you think of it in that context, those attributes that are once personal to you, are now could be by some country's propositions owned and operated, if you will, by a government entity.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (16:06)
So, what does that mean? How do you prove you are you, Anthony? If someone else popped up, or look at the Twitter hijacking that just occurred. How do you demonstrate that you are who say you are, you are saying what you're saying? And, that brings in the deep fakes and other things. And, putting aside all the possible misinterpretation in the present and other places. So, there's a real need for new technology to authenticate you, and to be able to audit the identity, if you will, so that we can be confident we're talking to Anthony, as opposed to-
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:42)
I just want you to know that situation that happened when I was the White House Communications Director, that was a deep fake, Madam Secretary. I mean, no one realized that-
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (16:50)
A body bubble.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:52)
Yeah, I just thought I would throw that out there. But in any event, I totally get what you're saying. And I think it's got to be a concern if you're a civil libertarian, and you want to protect people's privacy, and the privacy of their health. Obviously, all the stuff that we try to do to do that as well. But then, the flip side is, particularly with a pandemic going on, it could be helpful in containing the pandemic, if we know where people stand related to that disease. So, it's going to be a struggle. I want to flip to something that I would love to give you an opportunity to comment on. And, that is the President's policy related to separating families at the border, which became a hot button issue during your time as secretary. And, I wanted to give you an opportunity to address some of that, and potentially some of the misconceptions around it. And, I would also be remiss if I didn't ask about DACA, and what do you believe should happen next?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (17:52)
Let's see. So, let me take the last one first. It's time, it's so past time. I mean, for the moment that I was going through the confirmation process until now, I firmly believe personally, that it's time to give the DACA population a permanent status. And, the debate back and forth between the executive branch, and the legislative branch, and the judicial branch is not helping any of the DACA recipients. It's time for Congress to act and give them a status. The misconception that is very unfortunate is that, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, there is a belief that Supreme Court ruled in favor of DACA.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (18:35)
I don't know what that means. All the Supreme Court did was say that the DACA status from now will continue, but that's not a status, it's a deferred prosecution. So, they still do not have access to some of the benefits that they would have if they had a permanent status. They still don't have access to some of the assistance programs. So, I won't soapbox in it too much, but it's time for Congress to act. I mean, it's just time to do it. And, if you talk to most folks politically, there are some that disagree with that statement for sure. I do think the vast majority agree with it. It's just a clear... Unfortunately, it's an abdication of congressional responsibility. Congress passes laws on immigration, and Congress needs to do that. So, DACA, I feel very strongly we are way past-
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:27)
So, do you predict that that will happen, or do you think we'll be in a stalemate for an interminable period of time?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (19:34)
Yeah. I'd like to say that I was hopeful. I'd like to, in an optimistic moment believe that nothing is too hard for the Congress of the United States of America to handle. But, I'm also a bit of a realist on this, and we've seen the inaction now for years and years and years. I think what it will take is either a next action by the President, which I have no insight into, but he has said that he will do something on DACA, or another court case. There's still other lawsuits out there to my knowledge, and one or more could be a trigger event that then will push Congress to act. You hope it doesn't take that, and you hope if it does take that it all happens quickly. But, I think anybody that actually cares in any way about that population should continue to put pressure on the Congress, so that Congress can fix it.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (20:25)
The question you asked, it's a much larger issue. And bear with me, let me just try to frame it a little bit. Immigration in general is very complex, it's not well understood. I've found many, many times people wanted a binary answer, and the difficulty is often, it's not, it's a patchwork of rules, it's terribly, terribly broken system. The incentives are wrong, anyway. We should have a system where we can protect the sovereignty of this country, and protect vulnerable populations. We should be able to counter drugs and counter criminals while also welcoming those who seek asylum. And by the way, in the context of all of that we should be able to welcome legal immigrants. And, that's what our country is. It's what makes us strong. I know many of us believe that, but we need to separate the two. One shouldn't necessarily reflect directly in the other.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (21:24)
So, with the families, the truth is, there was no policy to separate families. And, let me walk you through, but let me tell you why that's really personally important to me. Such a policy was requested of me. It was requested of General Kelly as well, when he was secretary, and we both dismissed it out of hand. There was no direction to separate families who legally entered the United States. What happened is the attorney general in seeing an increase in law breaking, because it is law to enter the United States between ports of entry, a law that Congress has continued to uphold. As he saw increases of that law being broken, he decided to increase the law enforcement of that law. And so, he put out a policy of zero tolerance, meaning that the prosecutions should be done to anybody who chose to break that law, in this case entering the United States illegally.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (22:28)
So, the rest of us then we're in discussions of, "How do we do that?" Requires a tremendous amount of resources, given the numbers at that time of those entering illegally. And, the truth of it is, that if somebody came in illegally with a child as that adult went to a prosecutorial setting, we don't send children to jail in the United States. In most places they have very limited circumstances for that. But, there is no way to do that within the immigration setting. So, what happens is that after a certain period of time, if the adult does not come back from prosecution, the child is sent to the Department of Health and Human Services. And again, that's by law, that's not a choice.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (23:11)
So, the family separations resulted from the fact that a law was broken, an adult was being prosecuted, and the children as a result had to go into a different setting the family was thereby separated. And, let me just stress, the reason it's so important to me personally, that it not be called the policy is because there are still those today who advocate for a policy of family separation. What that would look like is, any family that was encountered anywhere in the United States, or at a legal port of entry, would be separated by virtue of the fact that they presented as a family unit. That is not a policy that has been adopted in the United States, and one that I will continue in any way that I can as a civilian citizen now to be against. I just think that's entirely and completely wrong.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (24:06)
So, what went wrong? What went wrong is that the three agencies, departments that are responsible for this, which is the Department of Justice, HHS, and DHS, we did not have the resources needed to quickly and efficiently prosecute the adults, and either reunite, or keep the families together in the sense that the child, or children would not have been sent HHS. And, when that became clear, when it became clear that those resources were not there, I did advocate with the president to end the practice, and he did. It was a terrible period for all involved, but it has been made more difficult by the fact that there is so much misunderstanding about it. At the end of the day, it's a law enforcement decision. We were a law enforcement agency, and law enforcement officials enforce the law.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:04)
Well, and I think it's a big learning lesson for everybody on this Salt Talk that you have a lot of different interagency decisions that are going on, a lot of different policies. And, sometimes the government is ponderous, and it's obviously imperfect as all human beings are. I want to ask a follow-up question, if that's okay. Not that this is even possible, but I'm just curious about your ideas. Let's say you were a policy czar, or you were somebody that could create policy to prevent this from happening. Maybe you could do it through the Congress or et cetera. What would your recommendation be based on your experiences in this issue?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (25:47)
Yeah. So again, let me try to be succinct because it is very complex. Nobody who cares about a migrant should ever encourage them in any way, indirectly, or directly to cross into the United States illegally. And, the reason I say that is because the vast, vast majority of those who travel that way do it at the hands of smugglers, transnational criminal organizations, and others who prey on them. I mean, they're not DHS figures when the Doctors Without Borders say that, two thirds to three quarters of the women are raped along that journey. It's not us, it's the NGO community who says that. Children are recruited into gangs, people are attacked for their organs. I mean, it's a very, very dangerous journey.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (26:40)
So, the way the system should work is, if you need to claim asylum, or you have another legal right to come to United States, you should go to a port of entry, where you can be documented as entering legally, and you can go into a process. If we do not have the resources we need at the ports of entry, that's what we should fix. But, we ended up in a situation where... And, it's a crazy catch-22 to be in, the one hand the Department of Homeland Security is the biggest law enforcement agency in the world. And, what happens there is, we all take an oath to enforce the law. So, you have one side of the debate, saying you must enforce the law, and if you don't enforce it enough, if you will, you're soft on law enforcement, you're soft on immigration, you are not following the law, in that you're choosing to not enforce it.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (27:43)
On the other side, you have those in Congress and others who rather than doing their job, tell another branch of government, "You don't enforce the law." It's too hard for us to fix it, essentially, so just you don't enforce it. And, when you step back, Anthony, that's crazy. That's got to be the beginning of the unraveling of the democracy, when you have Congress saying to the executive, "Just don't enforce the law." So, what I would do is, I would ensure that we have enough resources at the ports, I would revise the way that we do asylum. One of my big pushes was, I don't understand why we can't help protect vulnerable populations sooner in their journey. Why do we make them come all the way to the US border? Why couldn't we find a way for them to go to an embassy, or other safe place along their journey to make their case for asylum along the way? I mean, the system itself doesn't make any sense if you're trying to protect vulnerable populations.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (28:37)
So, I spent a tremendous amount of time in the Northern Triangle working with those countries. We signed quite a few agreements to protect children, to protect families, to protect those from smugglers and traffickers. And, all of that needs to be cemented, that cooperation needs to be cemented so that we can help them protect vulnerable populations. But it's past time, Congress needs to fix it. I mean, there's been lots of legislation floating back and forth. Let's just do it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:04)
So once again, it's this farce, and it's back to congressional inertia. If you notice, I've been big-footing John Darsie since he mentioned by firing, so I'm going to ask one more question before I turn it over to him. And, I want to go to Portland, Oregon, and the acting DH secretary has marshaled unmarked law enforcement to put down some of the protests in Portland, and I was just wondering what your response would have been, same or different than the approach that the administration is currently taking.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (29:35)
So, this is another example where just watching it, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding, and then I think like most Americans trying to understand what exactly is happening. What I can tell you is that, it is a part of the mission set of the Department of Homeland Security to protect federal facilities. There's an entire operating agency within DHS called the Federal Protective Service, and that's their mission. The law says DHS shall, it's not voluntary. So, that part of the mission exists. What happens next, and how far that authority goes, again, I'm not I'm not as familiar with the specific facts on the ground, but I do you think it's important to start by saying where the mission is.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (30:23)
In my opinion the mission should be limited to what the mission is. And then, in a traditional law enforcement way we support state and locals upon request for other mission sets within our authorities. I think there's also a lot of misunderstanding around what's marked and what's not marked. The uniforms of the folks from DHS, so viewed in the news, that is the uniform that some of the unique law enforcement entities within DHS wear. They're marked police, they have patches. The ones who are in fatigues. It looks to me like they are a part of a border unit, and that's what they wear every day at the border to blend in.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (31:09)
So, there's a lot of misunderstanding. But I think, to me, mostly what this shows is the very important need for state and local governments and law enforcement to find a way to work with the federal government and vice versa. I can tell you in 2018, we had an ice facility, we still do, in that area. And, we did have some protesters, it had been under attack, and about 28 days in, we acted through our federal law enforcement means to protect the building. But, that was because the local law enforcement and political leadership would not do that, and somebody had to protect the employees who were just trying to do their job and get into work.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (31:54)
So, I have not talked to the mayor. I haven't talked to the political leadership, obviously within Portland. I don't know what the actual situation is there. But, I would just offer that law enforcement needs to be provided to all communities within a community. And in this case, if that's not occurring, part of the federal mission of the federal government is to protect federal buildings and those inside. So, we'll have to see how it works, what happens next, but I do think we have to start with what are the facts, and then let's try to understand the best way to move forward. There's also a huge difference by the way, between the peaceful protesters...
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (32:33)
I mean, my understanding of what some of the press is describing is the violence or what appears to be violent activities happening at night. During the day it looks like they're peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. And then, there is another, either a separate group, or a different time of the day at night when they do throw things at the buildings, either using firecrackers, or using frozen water bottles, they're trying to attack. And again, violence is violence, hate is hate, it doesn't have any place. So, we should all be working together to limit that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:13)
And, you didn't mention the terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh 25 years ago on a federal building in Oklahoma, which is one of the main reasons why you have to have some level of security around these buildings. Okay. I'm dominating the conversation, Madam Secretary, so I have to turn it over to the erstwhile John Darsie, and he's got a whole series of questions that are coming in from our audience. So, go ahead, John.
John Darsie: (33:39)
Yeah. I want to pivot to COVID for a moment. And, I think it's fair to say, as a society, both on the government level, and how they've interacted with the private sector, our response to the virus has been somewhat discombobulated, is the nice word I'll use. How do we need to reexamine how governments and private sector companies execute risk assessments and manage risk in today's environment using something like a pandemic as a example? Obviously, there was a lot of hand wringing about President Trump's decision regarding the Defense Production Act, and whether he should invoke it. But, what do we need to do to be more prepared for future pandemics, and for similar types of situations that might arise in the homeland that might require a more coordinated response?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (34:28)
Yeah. So first of all, I'm sure there will be various entities that do a lessons learned review. And, I do think that'll be extraordinarily important to more tactically and technically answer your question, which is, do we have the right entities? Do they have the right authorities? Do we have the right mechanisms in place? What I would say is, there are a couple different things at play here. One, unfortunately, is a lack of information. Risk assessments and risk making management really only work when you have data. When you don't, when the basis of a risk management profile is uncertainty itself, it's very difficult. And, I think we've seen that with the markets. I mean, the markets crave data to the extent that the data keeps changing, the markets have a hard time interpreting that, just as every citizen in every country does, as they try to make their own risk assessment each day as to what to do, what to engage in, whether to wear masks.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (35:28)
So, first of all, the data is very important. And, I think we will find out more about the data that's available as we go forward. But, I would just offer that it's really important with a pandemic or any cascading events to understand its origin, and to very quickly share that information in a transparent way so that others can prepare and respond. And, I think the delay with getting the information from China certainly has contributed to this. The delay in calling it pandemic certainly has contributed to this. The debates between international organizations with respect to the epidemiology leaves all of us scratching our heads as to what should we do? What's the answer?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (36:12)
I think the asymptomatic transmission has caught many off guard. That wasn't necessarily something we heard a lot about say in February or March. So, as we learn more, the way in which we respond should change. But again, that adds another level of uncertainty. Why are we changing the way that we do this as we go? I think we're also seeing federalism play out. It's the age old debate in any homeland security or other national security event, who's on first? Who's in charge? What are they doing? And, we're seeing that play out at state and local levels. We're seeing that play out between state and local levels, and then we're seeing that in the private sector. You've mentioned the DPA and that's where that mix hits of, what should the private sector be doing? What is the federal government and other governments have access to?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (37:05)
You asked me so much in the question, I'm trying to get to at all. But, on the business side, I would just say, we all have to be adaptable. I mean, this is demonstrating that if part of your business plan, if part of your culture is not to anticipate and adapt, you're not going to survive, you won't have a sustainable business model. And, some companies have done that quite well. I think we've seen that, others are slow, whole industries are slow to adjust. But, this is a difficult event because the orientation very much like a mass scale cyber event, the orientation, if you will, of left and right a boom doesn't exist. It's not a hurricane that comes and goes, it's not a chemical attack that comes and goes, although chemical attacks of course have lasting effects as do recover from hurricane.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (37:52)
But, this is much more an active situation. We're very similar to what I would tell you in cyber. We have to look at it more for how long can we withstand attack? If you will. If this is a new normal, how do we learn to innovate while under attack? I mean, that's something I would see in cybersecurity, but is very applicable here, because it's an ongoing event. So, how do you adjust in midstream, and then from a resilience perspective, that's really where we're all headed. We can't prepare for everything. We have to focus on being resilient. Part of what that means is, not only learning to innovate while under attack, but learning how to bounce forward, it's not just bounce back. What can we do to anticipate tomorrow, while we're addressing today? So, I think the orientations have to change, or we won't be able to continue to move forward. Pick a topic, whether it's education, whether it's work, whether it's different industries, whether it's government.
John Darsie: (38:53)
I want to pivot to another question from the audience. It's about election security, excuse me, and hacking. So, our intelligence agencies basically produced a report after the 2016 election that confirmed that there was interference in our election, mainly from Russia. And, there's early reports heading into the 2020 election that there seem to be similar ambitions from Russia, and other actors to interfere in our elections. From my perspective, this is a bipartisan issue, today that interference could be taking place on the side of one party, tomorrow it could be taking place on the side of another party. What do we need to do to secure our elections? And, how worried are you about the 2020 election, and the threat of the hacking, cyber warfare, and interference?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (39:43)
First of all, I'm happy to say we are vastly more prepared from election security perspective than we were for the last presidential election. The 2018 election was a great midpoint in the preparedness. But, I think as you described, there's two separate parts of it. One is the hacking, if you will, to generically use that term, of the systems, of the infrastructure of the elections. And, that's a role that DHS plays in terms of helping state and locals prepare and prevent any nefarious activity.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (40:18)
The other part is the malign interference from foreign governments. The FBI has lead on that, that's the misinformation campaigns. DHS and the rest of the interagency support them in that. But, there's two parts to it, so on the first part, the DHS role, DHS is working with over 6000 jurisdictions, they're working with all 50 states, we have sensors in all 50 states. DHS has a whole panoply of tools that they're offering. CISA and Director Krebs have just done tremendous work in building the partnerships, and taking time to understand how individual states do elections to make sure that they have what they need, in support.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (40:58)
On the foreign interference side, my personal opinion is, we got to shine a sunlight. If I read something, and somebody says, "Okay. You're your neighbor or your good friend just said that." I will think of it one way. If I read that exact same thing, and then you say to me, John, "Okay. That was written by a Russian bot." Or, "That was written by the Chinese government." I'm going to feel differently about it. It's exact same sentence that were a piece of paper information. So, the more that we can communicate, and declassify in appropriate ways, the intel to help Americans understand that there is a misinformation campaign, then hopefully Americans will take the time to look at sources, and really think through what it is they're reading. But, we have to do that part, we have to raise the awareness to help them know the job that we expect them to do.
John Darsie: (41:51)
We have two more questions, and then we'll let you go. We have a ton of engagement from the audience, which we really appreciate. As Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, you deal with threats, both foreign and domestic, and there's been a rise in homebred militia type groups that have felt empowered to go out and try to enforce some semblance of law enforcement on a private basis. Does that concern you as a former government official, the idea that some of these threats we're facing now are more homegrown and domestic?
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (42:25)
Absolutely. In fact, one of the things while I was secretary I did, was I asked that all of our strategies that addressed Islamic extremism be expanded to address targeted violence in general, to include domestic extremist. Again, under that theory, I mentioned earlier, not theory, but belief that that hate is hate. Violence is violence. It does not have a place in our society. So, DHS has undergone a lot of policy and strategy work to expand the aperture, if you will, to make sure that they include domestic terrorists, and other targeted hate groups along and in conjunction with the departments of the FBI, and state locals.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (43:08)
But, I would say, absolutely, because it is a different type of pernicious threat, it's not a threat emanating, if it's domestic in the way I think you meant. It's not necessarily a threat emanating from over there. It's within our cultures, within our societies, within the schools, within... And so, the partnership that's required to address that needs to be expanded. But yes, I remain very concerned about it.
John Darsie: (43:34)
So, the last question we'll ask you is, there's some former members of the Trump administration that have had commentary about the way things have worked internally. We're not going to sit here and ask you who you're voting for, or something like that. But, as we evaluate leaders going forward in this country, what are the types of qualities that you look for in a leader especially for a President of the United States.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (44:00)
That's a great question. And, I hope all Americans really take it to heart, and really do their homework, and really think through at the federal, state and local level, who they're going to vote for in this next election. I think we need to look at what's happening. We need to, whether it's COVID, whether it's the... There's so many, many issues, I won't take all the time, you know what they are. But, when we look at them all, we have to think about who is best to lead us through it, and to continue to help us all recover, and move forward.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (44:33)
And, my experience with this is, we have a real institutional memory problem in government right now. There's been so much turnover. Personally, I think some of the issues in the interagency with respect to the pandemic, is just there's not very many people left who were there from the extensive planning that was done in 2005, 2006, and under the last administration. And so, the continuity, the understanding of government, how it works, the laws, the restrictions, the international partnerships, all of that is part and parcel with governing, and we have to make sure that we elect leaders who have those capabilities, who understand...
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (45:13)
I know many have come on Salt Talks and talked about the importance of vets, of former military members. And, I think that's because they do have that. They're schooled in that, they're trained in that. But, it's not just that, it's people who have taken the time to understand how our constitution works, how federalism works, and how that plays out within a given construct. During a crisis, you have to be crisis ready, you have to have a personality and ability to stay steady through a crisis. My biggest fear right now is in the middle of corona, something else will happen. We'll have a Cat 5 hurricane, or we'll have another pandemic, or a nation state will choose to look at our weakness, and decide that it's time to more aggressively attack, or terrorist organization. So, you have to have steady leaders that have the knowledge, and the ability to lead. And so, as we all look towards this election in the fall, I hope everyone does their homework, and really gives it a good think. It's important.
John Darsie: (46:14)
Well, Secretary Nielsen, thanks so much for joining us. Anthony, do you have any final word for the secretary? Very grateful for your time.
Anthony Scaramucci: (46:20)
We appreciate your time, Secretary Nielsen. If I didn't get John in there I would have had to hear it later in the day. So, thank you for tolerating him and his questions. But in the meantime, I hope we can get you back to one of our live events, which we expect to kick off again as soon as the pandemic is over. But with that, thank you so much, and we hope to see you soon.
Kirstjen M. Nielsen: (46:43)
Oh, my pleasure to you both. Thank you so much.